Recently, two Muslim New Yorkers—Wesam
(Khalid) El-Hanafi and Sabirhan (Tareq) Hasanoff were
arrested in Dubai by federal authorities for swearing
allegiance and providing technical and material support
to Al Qaeda. Federal prosecutors accused El-Hanafi of
trying to start his own
"mini Al-Qaeda cell" and he was caught with
seven Casio watches, which are
the preferred bomb timers for Al Qaeda. According to
the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Southern District of
New York, [Indictment:
PDF] Hasanoff received $50,000 from Al Qaeda and
advised an Al Qaeda member how to use his passport to
avoid detection by authorities.

El-Hanafi was born in
Brooklyn to an Egyptian family. Hasanoff came to New
York from
Australia (judging from his surname, he is either
from
north Caucasus or
Central Asia). Like the alleged perpetrator of the
Ft.
Hood massacre,
Nidal Hasan, and the alleged Time Square bomber,
Faisal Shahzad, both El-Hanafi and Hasanoff were
middle-class graduates of American universities.

El-Hanafi and Hasanoff
both attended CUNY Baruch College, which happens to
be my alma mater.
!" [VDARE.COM note:Baruch is a public
college, with no religious affiliation, part of CUNY. It
is
named for
1889 alumnus
Bernard Baruch.] Baruch College
prides itself on providing a low-cost, but high-quality
education, primarily in the fields of finance,
accounting, and management. The College's motto is:
"The American Dream still works

Main Stream Media outlets that
reported the story were surprised that successful young
professionals would abandon their careers and move to
the Middle-East to help Al Qaeda. (For example,
"The emergence of
educated, well-paid professionals allegedly turning to
homegrown terrorism may mark a shift from
disenfranchised, low-income radicals to a new class of
criminal." [Brooklyn
men busted in Dubai may be new faces of terror: experts,
By Alison Gendar and Samuel Goldsmith,
New York Daily
News, May 2, 2010])

But as someone who attended
Baruch College,
I was not surprised at all.

Compared to most other American
universities, Baruch may seem like a bastion of
conservatism because of its emphasis on business and
because of the large number of
Russian-speaking students. However, many of the
classes I took were permeated with an atmosphere of
anti-American feeling. This anti-Americanism emanated
almost exclusively from students of Third World
origin—both U.S. citizens and international students.

A Jamaican student then launched a
tirade claiming that this country was
"built on racism
and oppression". She asserted that every white
American (even a relatively recent arrival like me) is
responsible for slavery and
every form of oppression. She unashamedly stated
that reverse discrimination in the form of
racial
quotas was required to atone for all the evil acts
of white Americans.

The professor looked on approvingly
during this pathetic outburst and then suggested that we
read
Howard Zinn's pseudo-scholarship in order to get a
good understanding of American history.

Both current
U.S. immigration policy and the anti-Americanism of
the academia are responsible for this emerging
phenomenon of Islamic terrorists with American college
degrees. Tens of thousands of people from countries with
strong Islamist terror networks enter the U.S. through
the F-1 student visa granted to international students
in American colleges and universities. In 2008, 8038
"international students"
entered America from Saudi Arabia; 2377 from
Nigeria; 1783 from Malaysia; 1768 from Indonesia;
1107 from Pakistan; 819 from UAE and over 500 each from
Egypt and Lebanon. Even if we assume that only half of
one percent of these students are Al Qaeda members or
active sympathizers, it still means there are about
eighty of them. That is four times more than the
nineteen hijackers of 9-11.

Undoubtedly, most Americans would be
outraged if they knew that thousands of young Saudi men
are entering this country every year. (Indeed, the F-1
statistics are—unsurprisingly—not posted on the State
Department site. I encountered them by chance at an
information website for immigrants.)

The alleged Time Square bomber, Faisal
Shahzad entered this country on an F-1 visa. He studied
at
Southeastern University (which closed last year) and
the University of
Bridgeport. While attending the latter, Shahzad
vented his fury at America and praised the 9-11
murderers
in a rambling email. Interestingly, this militancy
did not prevent him from going to New York City every
weekend to drink and party.

Both of the schools Shahzad attended
were cash-strapped and depended on an influx of
international students to stay afloat. The
potential dangers of these students to America were
willfully ignored by the schools' administrators. If
anything, these administrators gush over the fact that
so many international students are entering their
schools. After all, to the liberal American academia,
diversity is our greatest strength—a panacea for all of
this country's real and imagined problems.

At the same time, many American
professors, especially those that teach social sciences,
are consumed by a scathing dislike of their own country.
I have heard professors berate
America
(especially
Middle America) countless times and lament the fact
that we are not
"more like the
Europeans, who figured things out a long time ago".

In this kind of atmosphere, it is not
at all surprising that a Muslim student would be
radicalized. Even though Shahzad, Hasanoff, and El-Hanafi
were business and science majors, they would have been
required to take at least one social science course to
graduate and the chances are they would be exposed to
the anti-American rants of a leftist professor.

However, we
can impose a
complete moratorium on F-1 visas for residents of
countries with a substantial presence of Islamic terror
groups.

If the Republicans succeed in
taking back the Congress this November, an F-1
moratorium should be one of their key proposals.

All of the anti-terrorism measures
of this and the last administrations amount to nothing
if we still admit tens of thousands of prospective Al
Qaeda members every year and provide schooling for them
in our colleges and universities.

Eugene Girin [email
him] immigrated legally from the Republic of Moldova in
1994 at the age of 10. He has been published by
VDARE.COM,
Front Page Magazine, and other
websites.